Appearing to have awakened from a timeless slumber, this
nude was Rodin’s first life-size statue. He showed it in 1877
at the annual state-sponsored exhibition known as the
Salon, under a title referring to the third of the Five Ages
of Man (golden, silver, bronze, heroic, and iron) imagined
by the ancient poet Hesiod. The figure’s lifelike quality
led to accusations that Rodin had molded it directly on his
model’s body—a technique then regarded as cheating. Alma
de Bretteville Spreckels, cofounder of the Legion of Honor,
acquired this cast after its presentation at the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915.